“Tied wrist to bar for their red iniquitee.”
“To do butcher work” (he is speaking of war) “yer don’t want genlemen, ’cept to lead.”
“I got the gun-barrels red-hot and fetched the whipcord out of the cupboard, while the other man held the screaming, writhing thing down upon the floor.”
“Under whose (speaking of God) awful hand we hold dominion over palm and pine.”
I have no space to quote a longer passage of verse, evidently intended to be sung to a banjo, and describing the emotions of the author in a fit of delirium tremens when he suffered from the hallucination that a red-hot brass monkey was himself attempting song. The poet showed no jealousy of the animal. There was the full, hearty Anglo-Saxon friendship for a comrade and even for a rival, and I met the same tone again on a further page in the line:
“You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din.”
I looked up at Mr. Caliban and said:
“Well?”:—for these short phrases are often the most emphatic.
“Well,” said Dr. Caliban, “that man must not be allowed to go under. He must be made, and we must make him.”
I said that such a man could not fail to pierce through and conquer. He seemed the very salt and marrow of all that has made us great.